Oral History Interview with Susan Knapp
November 16, 2013
Interviewer: Cyns Nelson
Interview Transcribed by Cyns Nelson
[Interview takes place at the Valdez-Perry Branch Library in Denver, Colorado.]
00:00 CN: Today is November 16, 2013. My name is Cyns Nelson, and I’m conducting oral histories with residents from the Globeville, Elyria, and Swansea neighborhoods. This interview is part of the Denver Public Library’s “Creating Your Community” project, and the oral history will be archived with the Western History Department. Right now I’m talking with Susan Knapp, whose family is from the Swansea neighborhood.
So, let’s start by having you tell me your full birth name. Tell me when and where you were born.
SK: Got it. I’m Susan Lynne Knapp. We were born—I was actually, well, born—my grandparents lived over on Lafayette. But, on my FATHER’S side of the family, they were living in Globeville, and then moved over on Gaylord Street, and then later moved over to 4257 Josephine, later, in Swansea.
CN: What year were you born?
SK: I was born January 30, 1949.
CN: Okay. So, tell me a little bit more about your upbringing—what you remember.
SK: The entire family lived togeth—in other words, on my dad’s side, all of my aunts and uncles and cousins lived within a few blocks of each other. So we grew up—and, at a time—and they owned their business together. So it was a family business. And the opportunity of the cousins all being close together was more like brothers and sisters. If you went to school, you typically had cousins in your schools, together, and all this, too.
In a way, I felt it was a real gifted time. If my parents had to work, we’d stay at grandma and grandpa’s house.
CN: How many siblings did you have?
SK: I have two brothers—one other brother is two years younger than I am, and the other one is MUCH younger, so he didn’t get any of the experiences, really, that we had as younger people.
My grandfather worked different places, like at the Denver Mint. He was a guard at the Denver Mint in his early days. They moved down to that area from Fort Collins, from the north part, where part of their family had homesteaded. And then, this was like moving into the city when they came down to this area. Then, by that time—the aunts and uncles staying within two or three blocks, literally, of each other, is something we don’t typically do as much today, in our society.
CN: Yeah, absolutely. Describe for me what your neighborhood would have looked like—things that you remember about—what would people see, what would people hear, if they had never known your neighborhood?
SK: It’s funny. Sometimes, from that part, I can remember things as kids like: My grandparents at 43rd and Josephine would be right next door to the Serum Company. It’s a big—on Josephine Street, you had grandpa’s house, then to the south you had the Serum Company, and then immediate next door to that was railroad tracks. So, you had people come to work; you had Quick Way business across the street; you had the train usually coming at certain times—seems like 4ish—every day you heard the train coming, and you knew you stayed away from that part. But you heard it, and it rumbled.
You had the—there was a drugstore called Sunshine Drug, right across the street. But for some reason, we always walked down to the corner of 46th. Like, a little shopping center, and in the corner of the shopping center was Swansea Drug. My cousin and I—you didn’t have the thinking that you were going to go jump in your car and go some place; you walked down to Swansea for a Coke. And you always went down there for Cokes, because there was a great fountain. And, you didn’t buy regular Cokes. I was thinking about—we always had either chocolate Cokes or cherry Coke.
It’s funny. We must have had a thing for sugar. We never thought about it in those days. It was just typical. Everything was gobs of sugar. Because, I think of grandpa one time: When they were going to have a sugar shortage, and he had so many bags of sugar he had saved up from the Safeway, just a couple blocks to the east. I mean, he had—HOARDING sugar, is what he was doing. Maybe it’s because at one time—I saw pictures—he worked at the sugar factory up north, that we had in Colorado. So maybe that’s where he got some of that, too.
I think of sights and sounds: remembering Purina Mills; I think about the smell of the rendering plant. There was a smell from that rendering, because I think they burnt a lot of the hides and all that. On certain days it would burn and you would smell that smell in the air.
You know, community-wise it’s funny, because you had this industry and some of these businesses right next door to the grandparents. But, you still knew some of the neighbors as you walked down the street. Some of them we knew through our church or different things; like the Cramm family, and different ones. We would know different families that way, through the years.
05:06 But the main thing that I thought was interesting: I think our family was close because they had family business. Right where there was a Dieter’s [sp?]—dad was just telling me—there’s a Dieter’s gas station that, at the time, was raw ground. The family went from selling fruits and vegetables, door-to-door, to having a produce lot there where that gas station was, which is immediately to the west, I think, of the Colonial Motel. Kind of in that area was there this Dieter’s gas station was.
Then, after they had started to have their produce stand there—I guess, at one time they were trying to buy the property to continue that. Later, that property sold, and then the three brothers—the brothers were raised that they were to provide for the rest of the family. They then bought the property on 46th and Colorado Boulevard. Dad told me they had nothing—they, then, had to go to World War II. My uncle, Ornie Knapp, and my father Elmer had to go to World War II. They both went into the navy. And, while they were there, there was nothing on the property which is directly in front of the Safeway warehouse at 46th and Colorado.
While they were there, there was nothing going on that property, but they still had to make payments on this land. They came back, and they went ahead and built what we called “the store.” They build it, start it as a kind of grocery store, later turned into a nursery where they sold flowers and plants. At one point, we were the number one wholesaler of Christmas trees in all of Colorado. And the trees went to—they got the trees either from Colorado or from Montana. They would go up and get them in October. And then the railroad tracks that were over off of—the railroad track would be easy, to unload them from the boxcars. And that was about, approximately 48th and Colorado.
As a kid, I remember going to the boxcars to get these trees. And there was a Dolly Madison factory—Dolly Madison ice cream factory up there. The important thing is that Dolly Madison—I remember, it’s kind of funny—dad took me there as a little kid, I must have been four or five. And he walked up to the car, and I had stolen a package of Hostess cupcakes, and told dad: “Look, what I got.” I thought I was saving us money, and you were supposed to do this. And he took me right back, took me and said, “You’re going to give those—“and made me give them back, immediately. So I learned my first lesson in what was right and wrong.
I also remember being up there, and everybody was excited because they had ice cream—the Russians were sending up their first satellite, and they had Sputnik ice cream. It was a really big deal in those days, to have Sputnik ice cream named after the first Russian satellite. So, those were kind of fun, crazy things we remembered from those times, too.
CN: Yeah. What school did you go to?
SK: My father went to Swansea, and I went to Harrington. I guess—dad told me it was interesting—it was an honor to be able to put up the flag. And he did it for the entire school year, when he was in school. So you chose certain people to do that. Now, I went to Harrington Elementary, which is still part of the Swansea district. I went to Harrington from kindergarten through third grade. And then, fourth and fifth grade we went to Mount Calvary Lutheran, which is on York, just a few blocks from where Harrington was.
My fond memories of Harrington—a few things—I remember Field Days were fabulous, and a lot of fun. I remember those seed pods, the trees with seed pods, and breaking those seeds and playing with those things. I also remember, in third grade—a memory that I still have to today. We had a little boy in class, and he was supposed to five 50 cents for milk. He tore his dollar in half and handed it to the teacher. He thought, that’s what milk cost. Well this little boy was from the Hungarian Revolution. He had been brought over, IMMEDIATELY put into our classroom; didn’t know how to speak anything. So the teacher, my teacher, had asked me to take him to the office, to the principal. You know, to this day I don’t believe he ever returned to our classroom.
But I always remember my walking him to the principal’s office and thinking—instead of realizing that this is a child that has come from a tough situation in the Hungarian Revolution, all I was thinking was: What a not-very-smart kid. He has got to be the silliest kid I’ve ever met. I just thought, just like all other kids—when we have bullying today, I sometimes thought: We bullied that kid in our own way, because we didn’t have any idea. We weren’t taught history in such a way, I don’t think, to understand what they were going through when they were brought here. But I was the one that walked that little boy to the principal because he didn’t know what a dollar was and couldn’t speak English in our class.
10:05 Other experiences at Harrington: Harrington was just a good, basic school that I felt. But it got to a point, I wasn’t feeling as safe, sometimes. I had, one little kid said, “I’m gonna get you!” And I was scared to death, sometimes. This boy said, “I’m going to chase you home.” All I can remember is: My aunt’s house wasn’t very far; I hoped that her door was unlocked, and I hoped I could get in when I got there. I remember running as fast as I could to get to her house that day, because I was afraid.
I admit, I also remember one time at Christmas—my father having the Christmas tree lots—mother had hung clothes out on the line, just like we would always do, even in winter. The clothes would freeze on the clothes lines. But we came home one night; and I had some really nice new clothes, even a poodle skirt, and all this stuff—and a pink blouse to go with my poodle skirt. We came home, the clothes were not out on the line, and thought somebody had stolen them. Went to school a couple days later, and I saw the girl that lived across the street, down a couple [?], wearing my clothes. I really wanted to tell her: I know where you got your clothes. And I came home and told my mom, because I was so mad that somebody was wearing my clothes that I knew came off of our clothesline. (Laughs.)
I also remember, in Harrington, my mother was on the school board, and the PTA, which she liked. But, it seemed like this one girl—I was in Brownies; I went to Brownies, had my brown dress, had all that. I still have some of my Brownie stuff. We went to a Brownie meeting, and while my parents were inside doing something, I remember being outside and one of the other girls being really mean to somebody else. And I had to step in and try to—I just was so angry with her, I told mother, “I never want to go to another Brownie meeting again.” (Laughs.) These mean people!
You know, I don’t think—my brother didn’t have Boy Scouts and things. I did the Brownies for just a short time. Mother took me downtown to Florence dance places. You went, sometimes, _____? out of the community. In other words: We didn’t have a grocery store real close. So, if we went for groceries, we went to Dahlia Street—kind of East Denver, Park Hill—to Dahlia Shopping Center for our groceries, King Soopers, and there was a bowling alley there. If we wanted clothes, we typically would go to Chaffee Park, to the west, which was—I’m trying—west, still on 46th, but it would be—oh, I can’t remember—before you get to Lowell and Irving and all that stuff, kind of in that area. Chaffee Park Shopping Center. There was a Joslins store there. Then, if you were going to REALLY buy nicer things, you went downtown to May-D&F or Neusteters and those places.
But you typically didn’t just—like, we think, we have so much variety today. You didn’t turn around and go to a store on a regular—like, we can just now run over to the corner and get whatever. You had a purpose: If you were going to Joslins to buy whatever you needed, kind of thing. And if you were going downtown—it was typically to go to May-D&F—you went at Christmas time. You didn’t go downtown that often; you went Christmas or something more special. Because, the decorations down there were something you went to see. I mean, it was tradition.
We had more tradition—every year with grandpa and the entire family going downtown at the holiday time, was a big deal, where we all walked around. You WALKED around Civic Center, because there was so much to see, that way.
CN: What were the houses like?
SK: Huh! That’s interesting. I remember our little house having two VERY small bedrooms. My brother and I shared the one bedroom. And, in that bedroom we could barely fit two twin beds with one small chest in between it, and a small closet. The funny thing was: I can remember, as a kid, we had single-paned windows, and as the snow and cold would hit the metal around the window, it would freeze and would freeze so thick, at night you’d reach up there and feel the ice on the windows. I can remember peeling the paint off of that metal, which of course is, today, lead-based paint. I didn’t even THINK I would eat the paint; I just loved peeling it off. But that, literally, that ice on those windows would be—around the edges of the window—two, three, four inches around the entire window, in the winter time. It was that cold, from that part.
I remember: We didn’t live very far—right behind us, actually, was a little bit of a dump place. Because of the neighborhood, we got mice—we literally would have little mice running across the living-room floor as we were watching TV. There would be a little mouse, kind of coming out, like he was entertainment with the TV! We also hear mice running across, in the attic of the roof, sometimes. I don’t know why we didn’t have more control on this—but I think they just gave up and thought, having the open field behind us, we couldn’t totally have any control at all with those things.
15:14 It’s funny: Our home, later—our home was 700-and some square foot. We literally, in the kitchen, I don’t know what they called them, but there was a table in the kitchen—it was so small that you had to drop a leaf down. Then you would put—after a meal—you would put the wood back up and screw it back up. It would drop down, lift back up. And then, as you dropped it down, there was a place to set ketchup, salt, and peppers in the wall, is where it fit, inside of a shelfing thing. And the table comes up and down; you couldn’t get around it, you just, a couple of people sit there.
Oh, what’s funny: I remember the patterns on our drapes in the living room. They were patterns of something, like, you’d see in Hawaii. I didn’t know why that was popular at the time. But, they had this black with these great-big—oh, fronds, and things like this. Very colorful prints, in those days, that was very typical ‘40s and ‘50s stuff. (Laughs.) Actually, mother decorated very well. It looked pretty neat; now, when you look back, for retro it was great. (Laughing.)
CN: What about yards? What were—
SK: We had a HUGE backyard, it seemed like. Matter of fact, our yard was so pretty—and it did have [?] alleys, which, now we’re going back sometimes to alleys and some of those things. But, our yard went real deep. We played, snow, we got to ride on our sleds and all, going down this little bit of a hill. I even remembered one time, thinking—when I was about four or something—I was going to ride my trike, and I could ride it so fast. I would go off the steps going off the back—fell and cut my chin wide open, and wound up going over here to a doctor Embro [?], I remember, and _____ stitching up my chin.
But I also remember, we had a black cat that, for some reason, some neighbors were shooting BBs at my cat. You could feel the BBs inside the body of my poor kitty-cat. Then later, I remember there was—we let another black cat in, and a few days later I told my mom—I realized—“Mom, we let the wrong black cat in. We’ve had the wrong one in here for a couple weeks!” And our cat was the one that was actually out on the street. One time we had a bird, it was actually a real parakeet, fly up to the window. We had Chipper the parakeet for MANY years. After he flew up to the dining room window, we had that poor bird for many years. Good old—a parakeet flying up to the window, you don’t get that nowadays.
But, that house really—700-some square feet is what it was. The one bathroom? And four of us, sharing that bathroom to get ready to go to school and all. Our house faced the backyard of, the back of the next neighbors—one time we went out trick-or-treating and I told my brother: “There’s a motel on the corner; let’s go to the motel and see what happens for trick-or-treating.” And, you know, most of those people were surprised, “Oh, we didn’t realize anybody would come here.” Well, we knew they didn’t know they’d come here. So, the next-best thing they do is hand you some change for your trick-or-treats instead of candy! Which was fine with us.
I’ve talked to some other friends that used to live in the neighborhood. We had an A&W Root Beer stand on the corner. The really—like, today we have McDonald’s and Sonics and all this all over. There’s more of those on Colorado Boulevard right now then we had in those days. Those days, you had ONE. One A&W on the corner of 40th and Colorado, and everybody in the neighborhood knew that place. Everybody knew you got a baby root beer for two cents; the next size up was a nickel; and the biggest one was 25 cents. We would go there quite a bit on our way home from work, because of coming from Colorado back to the house. It was just—and those frozen mugs still—there’s A&Ws out there today, but they’re not the same as what that was, what I remembered as a kid. They WERE the best. That was really a fun place to go to.
CN: So, how long did you live in the neighborhood?
SK: We actually didn’t—let me see here. I was born in ’49, we sold our home in 19—we sold in the early ‘60s. The reason was, when they bought our property—what happened is, they built I-70. When I-70 was built, they told us—they told my dad and grandfather for 10 years that they were going to be putting a road through, and they’d be buying the property. So, for 10 full years. During that 10 years, they went ahead and thought: They’re never going to do this. So they went ahead and built on the corner, a little restaurant, a coffee shop, and a liquor store that my uncle ran. So they had this brand-new building, they’d only been there two or three years when they finally did go ahead and buy the property to do I-70.
19:50 When the—my other three uncles, and then this uncle by marriage, ran the liquor store; when they purchased that property—it’s interesting—it was more than just a purchase of the property, because, here’s this family that had started working, was always in business together. At the point the property was sold, it determined that the different families would go different directions. One uncle had decided he was going to go—their family wanted to move to Oregon, which they did. My dad had to decide, what am I now going to do to make a living. That happened in ’59. So dad—my dad was born in 1926. So, in his mid-thirties with his family, he had to decide what line of work am I going to go into. And then the other younger uncle went ahead and worked for the City of Denver, after that, helping with it at that point.
It not only meant that the property sold, it was a total change in the family. My grandfather was somewhat of a manipulative, controlling person, and he loved having them together, and this was a big change for him to accept. You know, had that property not sold and they’d [not] bought all their land, I’ll bet they’d been together until all of them had passed away. It’s interesting.
CN: Talk about the building of I-70, what you remember about that process.
SK: Exactly. I have pictures of the store, our store, because as a kid our store—my dad would actually sleep, and sometimes you’d sleep with him, but not very often. Somebody always had to sleep there to make sure that nobody came to steal stuff from the store. So they would literally have their business, but they’d sleep in a trailer house at night—it’s kind of scary. Every night, somebody had to take that job on. Then later on, when we actually did sell the store, I have pictures of the days when—we’d go up there and take pictures when they started tearing the building down, in order to build I-70.
CN: I’m sorry. Tell me the name of your store, again?
SK: I’m sorry—it was Ornie Knapp’s Country Market. I have some pictures to go with that. But Ornie Knapp’s Country Market, actually, everybody around this neighborhood knew the place. My grandpa bought a lot of his flowers and plants from the different places—in the beginning, their produce came from Denargo Market, down there, and they did that. But then later their flowers and plants came—and carnations decorate—it’s funny, you don’t see carnations a lot now, but every Memorial Day, carnations were a really big deal. Because that was the Colorado State Flower [?], so therefore, that’s what everybody took to the cemeteries. And we have LOTS of carnations on those days, that’s for sure.
Grandpa was funny. He was a character. People would say: He’d have one flower at—he’d have two sets of pansies: one at one end of the lot, for 29 cents; the other pansies at the other end, and they’d be 69, 79, and they’d say, “What’s the difference?” He said, “The price. “ And do you know what? The people would buy the more expensive ones. He honestly would say, “The price.” It was nothing different.
Our whole nursery was done in such a way; I can remember going down to Texas, to get a lot. You didn’t have things shipped from these places, in those days. We’d drive a truck down to Texas to get a lot of the trees and all that we sold at the store.
Then, later on, that’s when it became that we did the wholesaling of Christmas trees—wholesaling and retail of Christmas trees. Then they had—every brother had a different Christmas tree lot, all over Denver, from Federal to south Colorado Boulevard. Then, this was the MAIN office for where they had the tree lots, all the other parts of town.
I can remember Safeway—Safeway warehouse was actually very close behind our building. The kids—we, as kids, would play at the store. We had to water the plants; everybody had jobs. You watered the plants, or repotting of plants. At the same time, there was building of—you dug in the dirt, you built tunnels, you played together, too. I just don’t think—my son, or my nephew, they don’t have that kind of relationship with cousins, in the same regards as what we actually did, by doing that.
Some of the other families in the neighborhood—I think back. It was a real close family thing. You didn’t even think about going out to dinner, like, at night. We would go out sometimes for restaurants on Sundays, maybe, but not until dad had sold the business, really, because he was too busy working on Sundays. That was their main day. But later on, we didn’t go to—I’m sure, before we sold the store, we never went to restaurants. It was only later on, and then very limited. Not even every Sunday. Two things: cost—we tried to be conservative—and then secondly it would have been—there were so many things I buy today that I think, Oh yeah, we never would have bought that. It would have been too expensive in those days. In types of foods, or shrimp—we never bought shrimp, we thought it was very expensive. Things like that.
24:55 The restaurants we did go to—there was a little coffee shop that grandpa would go to once in a while. Before we built the coffee shop, he used to always go to the coffee shop up by our place. And they had the old-fashioned things for the music that you play, in the coffee shop that we built at the store—the jukeboxes, jazz and all that. He always took my brother over there for a hot chocolate. Because, he was real close to my brother, who was two years younger than I am—Gary was his name. It was pretty special.
CN: Well, and then, as you said, I-70—that construction changed everything. So what do you remember about that whole process?
SK: You know, once they started building I-70, you felt like—you had this feeling that, coming across I-70, that it was more of a commercial feeling. It did bring—like dad said, it split—when people say, “Did it split neighborhoods?” Yes, in some ways it did. And it brought more of the commercial feel, because—even from both sides of the stockyards and coliseum, it divided things somewhat here.
I remember some of the construction but actually not quite as much, because we just knew it was going to be—I guess maybe we felt, handled it differently than other people, due to the fact we were told for 10 years, “This is going to happen.”
CN: Did you really think it was going to happen?
SK: We got to a point of thinking, are they really? That’s why we built—two to three years before they built is why built that additional building on the property. So, you got to a point of thinking: These guys are just telling a story; they’re not going to do it. So then, I guess when it actually happened, you just knew it was a done deal. And you didn’t look at it from the “was this good,” “was it bad.” You looked at it: It’s just there, is the way we looked at it.
Oh, and you know: Other memory things. I thought of something else as I was thinking about things. Riverside Cemetery, I found out later, was a special place in the earlier days, because my mother had a brother that had been buried there. And different people would tell me—NOW, I go back to Riverside—I’ve been to Riverside Cemetery for tours, and I thought about how many people that I’ve known in my early days, several were buried at Riverside.
It’s funny, a friend of ours from church—years ago there was a guy named Art Carne, Art and John Carne, and they owned a company called Carne Electric. Carne Electric was very big in Denver, a bigger business around here. And Art Carne used to tell ME about taking dates to Riverside. He would have a date, and he would get his horse and wagon, and take them over to Riverside Cemetery for a picnic. They would sit on the edge of the Platte, because, he said, it was like a park. It must have been such a beautiful—by the way Art told me—it must have been a very beautiful place. And the fact that, later on, to realize what a heritage was there, was very special to me—that even today, that part signifies to me a community that is not just area, but the importance to all of Denver. So I hope that other, you know, other people realize that.
I didn’t even realize—I was looking things up yesterday, and I took a picture once, because it said “First Arapahoe County Sheriff,” was buried one place there. And I took a picture of that and sent it to my friend who’s a sheriff. Said, “Now see this? Look at where this is at!” And I guess the guy that was taking care of Riverside did the same thing. So that people would take care of the place, he’d take a picture of the fire—people that were from the fire department or sheriff’s or whatever. I later learned a lot about the orphan-train children. And he did a special monument to the orphan-train children. This fellow collected the money to put a monument there, in honor of the orphan kids.
The orphan-train children never had names—didn’t even names for their markers, or anything, when they were lost.
CN: Tell me what the orphan train—
SK: Orphan trains were brought from the East Coast to the West. It’s children that—they just put them on trains, to try to get people to take them. Well, when they put them on trains, people would come to the train and say, “I’ll take this child or that one.” And then what they would do is, literally have them work their farm or their businesses, and they’d make them work. Well, then the next year the train would come back again, and they sometimes would have the child they’d gotten the year before and decide that child was too old, or whatever. And they’d sometimes put THAT child back on and take a different child. They never went through full adoption processes or some of the things we did today.
It’s interesting. We just about lost them, but there was just a couple—I’ve heard them speak—there’s just a couple of these kids that used to ride the orphan trains, that were still alive in Denver area today, that spoke at meetings. There was a fellow in Colorado Springs that owned a couple of the Country Buffet restaurants—I found out—that had been an orphan-train child. But if you can imagine, just—and quite often girls rode—the young girls that were on those trains were abused, because nobody had to—there was no Social Services or anything making sure that the children were taken care of, or that it was safe.
30:06 You know, my dad grew up during those days, it’s interesting, during the days of orphan train, and all. I adopted my son 12 years ago—I’m a single person that was able to adopt. And I think that his perspective of things is somewhat still from the days of Depression. His perspective is days of Depression, and you worked. But if you’re an orphan you even worked harder. My perspective of life came during a time when we had it tough, and we worked really hard in the earlier days; but as we worked we paid off, and we got to a point where we were very successful. Actually, more successful than you think. It’s funny, one of the fellows that knew my dad from younger days—I was working for the courts, and when I ran into him, he says: “Your dad—” I know, because of him has turned out to be very successful. And it was true.
I also know, somebody different once would call and say, “I knew, because of your business, that you guys would do well.” Which, it turned out that way later. But our perspectives are totally different, generational. Dad is still, constantly—work was his goal, he did not know how to play. The lifestyle was part of that. And I somewhat know, being a Depression-era kid, why he came from that. Whereas, MY perspective was more: We worked, and we got things, and then we enjoyed it. My younger brother is more like—he is 16 years younger and never got those perspectives. I think because we had the small home and then worked up, I learned to really appreciate where we came from. And that appreciation is somewhat lost in the next generation after this.
So I guess that’s why, when we talked about doing some of this on Globeville and Swansea and Elyria, I looked back and had really kind of fond memories of the fact that we DID grow up without things. But I don’t want to give up what I have today, either! (Big laugh.) Because it’s pretty nice, now.
CN: So what is your relationship with the neighborhood now?
SK: Um, I have just been down to see—I guess I come down to buy products over at the old army arsenal. And boy, is that a cool building; because I’ve bought some fireplaces over there and seen things there. We drive through the neighborhood still. Oh, it was interesting—REALLY interesting, in that: We have a friend that had—Kevin Roy’s dad—worked at Purina Mills. We would have sold my grandfather’s house, 4257 Josephine, would have been sold after grandmother passed away in ’76. So, December of ’76 grandma—so, ’77 is when we would have sold grandpa’s house. I bet it was 20 years—I don’t remember what day—then dad and I, probably 10 years later, were walking around the property. It was vacant. And it was a pretty big, old, Victorian-looking house. I don’t know how they did it; the only bathroom in that house was upstairs. Tiny little stairway to get upstairs. I don’t know how grandma and grandpa did it. I mean, for them to be in their 70s and have one little tiny bathroom and a little tiny stairway going upstairs—I don’t know how they did that part.
But, anyway, it was after we had sold that house—probably 10 or 15 years later—people had been in it, and things. And then it was vacant. And dad and I were walking along—my grandfather was a rock collector. And as we walked around, there were two or three special, special geodes—BIG ones; I’m talking, 10, 12-inch geodes—laying over on the ground, over in the corner. I’m sure who ever lived there just though they were nothing. I looked at dad, and he looked at me. I said, “We know what those are. Those were grandpa’s geodes, because of his rock collection.” I mean, he had a LOT of money into a rock collection, that nobody had any idea. So I picked up the geodes, and I probably still have those today.
I mean, it was kind of special, because it was bringing back a memory when you got to do that. Well then, only a couple years—so AFTER that, it’s funny, I accidentally found out—a friend of ours was driving down—because York was one way headed north, and what’s the next one over—Oh! No, Josephine was one-way headed north, York was headed south. Our friend was leaving work at Purina Mills when he saw a big fire over there. It turns out, he was afraid—he drove over and saw this fire and was worried somebody might be in the house. So he had called the fire department, the whole thing. It turns out this friend of ours is the one that reported the fire in my grandfather’s house, when it literally wound up to be burnt to the ground. He, it turned out later, the cab company wound up buying the property for their use. It’s interesting that you actually got to talk to the person that saw the house when it caught on fire, and when they lost it.
35:03 I remember things like, in grandma’s house going upstairs to my aunt’s bedroom and having that old rose wallpaper that was so popular in those days. The pink and reddish rose wall papers were everywhere. There was a closet—oh my goodness. There was a closet that was angled in the back, and you can’t believe it: My dad had a firecracker stand with a guy that used to have part of the airport, the Vest family. He had these firecracker stands. He told me that, up on Colorado Boulevard one time—it would have been on the Swansea side—they parked an airplane and made it look like it crashed. And everybody would then see this, and stop at the firecracker stand. And they sold firecrackers like CRAZY.
So, if you can believe, that happened. They had that stand—could have been in the ‘40s or early ‘50s, about the time when I was born, late ‘40s, they had this firecracker stand. I’m telling you, when we were cleaning out grandma’s house, in the late ‘70s, dad had stashed a bunch of those firecrackers. Now, we are talking heavy-duty Chinese cherry bombs and really powerful type firecrackers, he had stored in the closet of that house! And only two years ago, he still had those firecrackers in my fire vault. In my garage, I have a file cabinet that is fireproof—supposedly—he put the firecrackers in my fireproof fire vault! Since then, in the last two years, I can guarantee—for safety sake—those firecrackers have disappeared. When you have firecrackers that are 60 years old, it’s time to go! (Laughing.)
CN: Did you ever go to the National Western?
SK: Oh yes, as kids, oh yes. Actually, all the cousins actually went, one time. I can remember walking through, and walking—and I LOVED little lambs and sheep. So, seeing baby lambs over there was the greatest. But the funniest thing is walking through with my cousins, and one of the cousins fell, in “stuff.” In doo-doo stuff. And we were just laughing and teasing each other about this. When you’ve got about 10, 12 cousins walking through this place together, and then teasing the other one who didn’t take it as funny as we took it. Those were really fun times of remembering that, yes. Going to stock show was a very big deal.
CN: What do you know about its development now?
SK: I just know that I have a cousin, that’s on the other side of the family, that’s still VERY active with the stock show. Matter of fact, I was teasing, because he gets grand-champion chicken every year. I mean, it’s so funny. Because I tease him and his daughter about getting number one and two, number two prize. Literally, I think she won $2,000 dollars or so, last year, for her grand-champion chicken. And that helped her go to Hays, Kansas—to go to Kansas, to go to college! So that’s the part I pretty much remember from things there now.
I actually like the venue for going to the Coliseum, still. Because, when we would go to ice-skating shows or some of that, later, you can go, and it’s a smaller venue, and it’s closer to watch everything. And it feels intimate, compared to going to Pepsi Center. And I still—I mean, Pepsi Center may be big and new, but I still like the environment of going to the Coliseum to see things. I liked walking through the barns, like some of the stuff [?] people selling, and all of the little outside places over on the other side of the street. It’s just a local, community feel of going—it’s almost like going to the county fair, feel. Any time you go to the stock show, it’s that kind of feel.
It’s amazing what they have done, actually done for our community, in the long-term growth of things here, and has the feel of past.
CN: So, we can kind of start to work towards the end of our conversation. Tell me what you see for this neighborhood, for the future, and what you would like to see.
SK: I’m impressed with, actually—I’ve learned some things recently, like this little GrowHaus project, and how it’s for the community’s sake.
CN: Say more about that.
SK: I read something about that, and I look forward to—and when I said something to my brother, he said, Oh—he knows all about it. GrowHause is supposed to be a project where there are actually hydroponic growing plants and things. So they have fresh fruits and vegetables, and the education toward the people, for that purpose. And then it’s a recycling, where they’ve got fish. And products from the fish can actually help the plants, too. So, I’m impressed with those kinds of local, community projects, that can still take place.
There’s so much history—like, I find out, dad said when he was at Swansea Elementary School, George McMeen was actually the principal when dad was at Swansea. And later they named McMeen School after the guy that was the principal from when he was there.
40:10 There is a history that’s here that is—like, the Smelter, etc. There’s history that’s here, that sometimes is forgotten when we move on. I think, all of a sudden when you have redevelopment in Highlands or—and some of that—and on the west side. There’s so much that we need to see a community feel. There’s still—you need to have protection, you need to have, for the sake of the people—you can do it in a way to preserve heritage, is what I would like to see happen. I think that can—I think the stock show and some of these things down here, the community can still gather around a lot of this. And I think it’s just great, to have it.
If you lose respect for the area, you don’t take care of it. If you keep that respect, you’ll take care of it. Like I say, to me, Riverside has as much heritage for me as Fairmount Cemetery, because it’s our total, Colorado—it means a LOT to me, actually, because—I took my dad there, he had never really gone. We took mom and dad, and my friend took us on the little tour, on the golf cart, and told us things—history that THEY didn’t even know.
I honestly didn’t even know what the Buffalo Soldiers were, from—was old history. And they had some of the Buffalo—this one presentation, there—he had Buffalo Soldiers there, and told us more history that—if we could teach kids through actually active things, that way, and just maybe bring the kids over to see it, it would sure help.
I hope that we see that heritage is worth saving.
CN: Right. Well, do you want to look back and see if there’s anything—
SK: If I have anything _____ [?]
CN: --anything you wanted to finish with, that I didn’t ask about.
SK: I have a great one. Over by the Coliseum—we talked about the Coliseum? When I was a kid, my very favorite book was called “The Boxcar Children.” I may even still have MY copy of that book, today. Just beyond—there was a field just west of where the Coliseum sat. And literally, there was a—it wasn’t a boxcar, it was like the caboose. There was like a caboose car out there kind of in the middle of a field. And it was always like—I still have a picture of it in my mind today, because it was literally a family living in that caboose. And, because that book was my favorite book, it related to—there was the real family that lived in the Boxcar Children book. And there was a real family that was REALLY living there.
And it was amazing: About a month ago, or so, my nephew—seven years old, little David—comes up, and he’s reading this book. And his book, he’s reading, is the “Boxcar Children.” I had to tell him that was my favorite book as a kid, and I still have my copy of it. I just love that. I mean, if you could see that, in the middle—and the grass fields around it, and THAT typical caboose car sitting out there, and a family coming in and out of there, and living in there. It was real world. Great.
Let me see if I have any other notes of really exciting things. I think that may be (papers shuffling)—Oh! Dad told me about remembering when the circus would come to town, along the railroad tracks. They would always go down, and he says, quite often they unloaded the animals right at the corner of 46th and Josephine and York. Right about that spot is where they’d actually unload the animals to bring over to the Coliseum. And you know it’s—I did not realize—we recently went up to the wildlife sanctuary in Greeley, where they save a lot of the animals. But, we have changed in that, they are not bringing—like, in those days, you literally would have LOTS of tigers, and LOTS of lions and all this, brought to a circus. So it would be car after car of this. Whereas today, we’re not using as many of those animals in the circus.
So, when a circus would come to town for them, and unload a lot of this, it HAD to be a very big deal to walk three blocks and see them unload cars of all this, to go for, over—I don’t think dad actually got to go to the real circus; because I think they really didn’t have the money to go to that place. But it’s interesting, to hear that side of it.
I remember the stories about the smelter, and I don’t remember a whole lot about smell from that. Um—(looking at notes)—just where we shopped, it was pretty interesting. I think we got it. That was good.
CN: Okay. Well, thank you very much for taking time to do this. We really appreciate it.
SK: Oh, thanks a lot, too. It was fun to look back and think back, that’s for sure.
45:04 [End of recording. End of interview.]

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Oral History Interview with Susan Knapp
November 16, 2013
Interviewer: Cyns Nelson
Interview Transcribed by Cyns Nelson
[Interview takes place at the Valdez-Perry Branch Library in Denver, Colorado.]
00:00 CN: Today is November 16, 2013. My name is Cyns Nelson, and I’m conducting oral histories with residents from the Globeville, Elyria, and Swansea neighborhoods. This interview is part of the Denver Public Library’s “Creating Your Community” project, and the oral history will be archived with the Western History Department. Right now I’m talking with Susan Knapp, whose family is from the Swansea neighborhood.
So, let’s start by having you tell me your full birth name. Tell me when and where you were born.
SK: Got it. I’m Susan Lynne Knapp. We were born—I was actually, well, born—my grandparents lived over on Lafayette. But, on my FATHER’S side of the family, they were living in Globeville, and then moved over on Gaylord Street, and then later moved over to 4257 Josephine, later, in Swansea.
CN: What year were you born?
SK: I was born January 30, 1949.
CN: Okay. So, tell me a little bit more about your upbringing—what you remember.
SK: The entire family lived togeth—in other words, on my dad’s side, all of my aunts and uncles and cousins lived within a few blocks of each other. So we grew up—and, at a time—and they owned their business together. So it was a family business. And the opportunity of the cousins all being close together was more like brothers and sisters. If you went to school, you typically had cousins in your schools, together, and all this, too.
In a way, I felt it was a real gifted time. If my parents had to work, we’d stay at grandma and grandpa’s house.
CN: How many siblings did you have?
SK: I have two brothers—one other brother is two years younger than I am, and the other one is MUCH younger, so he didn’t get any of the experiences, really, that we had as younger people.
My grandfather worked different places, like at the Denver Mint. He was a guard at the Denver Mint in his early days. They moved down to that area from Fort Collins, from the north part, where part of their family had homesteaded. And then, this was like moving into the city when they came down to this area. Then, by that time—the aunts and uncles staying within two or three blocks, literally, of each other, is something we don’t typically do as much today, in our society.
CN: Yeah, absolutely. Describe for me what your neighborhood would have looked like—things that you remember about—what would people see, what would people hear, if they had never known your neighborhood?
SK: It’s funny. Sometimes, from that part, I can remember things as kids like: My grandparents at 43rd and Josephine would be right next door to the Serum Company. It’s a big—on Josephine Street, you had grandpa’s house, then to the south you had the Serum Company, and then immediate next door to that was railroad tracks. So, you had people come to work; you had Quick Way business across the street; you had the train usually coming at certain times—seems like 4ish—every day you heard the train coming, and you knew you stayed away from that part. But you heard it, and it rumbled.
You had the—there was a drugstore called Sunshine Drug, right across the street. But for some reason, we always walked down to the corner of 46th. Like, a little shopping center, and in the corner of the shopping center was Swansea Drug. My cousin and I—you didn’t have the thinking that you were going to go jump in your car and go some place; you walked down to Swansea for a Coke. And you always went down there for Cokes, because there was a great fountain. And, you didn’t buy regular Cokes. I was thinking about—we always had either chocolate Cokes or cherry Coke.
It’s funny. We must have had a thing for sugar. We never thought about it in those days. It was just typical. Everything was gobs of sugar. Because, I think of grandpa one time: When they were going to have a sugar shortage, and he had so many bags of sugar he had saved up from the Safeway, just a couple blocks to the east. I mean, he had—HOARDING sugar, is what he was doing. Maybe it’s because at one time—I saw pictures—he worked at the sugar factory up north, that we had in Colorado. So maybe that’s where he got some of that, too.
I think of sights and sounds: remembering Purina Mills; I think about the smell of the rendering plant. There was a smell from that rendering, because I think they burnt a lot of the hides and all that. On certain days it would burn and you would smell that smell in the air.
You know, community-wise it’s funny, because you had this industry and some of these businesses right next door to the grandparents. But, you still knew some of the neighbors as you walked down the street. Some of them we knew through our church or different things; like the Cramm family, and different ones. We would know different families that way, through the years.
05:06 But the main thing that I thought was interesting: I think our family was close because they had family business. Right where there was a Dieter’s [sp?]—dad was just telling me—there’s a Dieter’s gas station that, at the time, was raw ground. The family went from selling fruits and vegetables, door-to-door, to having a produce lot there where that gas station was, which is immediately to the west, I think, of the Colonial Motel. Kind of in that area was there this Dieter’s gas station was.
Then, after they had started to have their produce stand there—I guess, at one time they were trying to buy the property to continue that. Later, that property sold, and then the three brothers—the brothers were raised that they were to provide for the rest of the family. They then bought the property on 46th and Colorado Boulevard. Dad told me they had nothing—they, then, had to go to World War II. My uncle, Ornie Knapp, and my father Elmer had to go to World War II. They both went into the navy. And, while they were there, there was nothing on the property which is directly in front of the Safeway warehouse at 46th and Colorado.
While they were there, there was nothing going on that property, but they still had to make payments on this land. They came back, and they went ahead and built what we called “the store.” They build it, start it as a kind of grocery store, later turned into a nursery where they sold flowers and plants. At one point, we were the number one wholesaler of Christmas trees in all of Colorado. And the trees went to—they got the trees either from Colorado or from Montana. They would go up and get them in October. And then the railroad tracks that were over off of—the railroad track would be easy, to unload them from the boxcars. And that was about, approximately 48th and Colorado.
As a kid, I remember going to the boxcars to get these trees. And there was a Dolly Madison factory—Dolly Madison ice cream factory up there. The important thing is that Dolly Madison—I remember, it’s kind of funny—dad took me there as a little kid, I must have been four or five. And he walked up to the car, and I had stolen a package of Hostess cupcakes, and told dad: “Look, what I got.” I thought I was saving us money, and you were supposed to do this. And he took me right back, took me and said, “You’re going to give those—“and made me give them back, immediately. So I learned my first lesson in what was right and wrong.
I also remember being up there, and everybody was excited because they had ice cream—the Russians were sending up their first satellite, and they had Sputnik ice cream. It was a really big deal in those days, to have Sputnik ice cream named after the first Russian satellite. So, those were kind of fun, crazy things we remembered from those times, too.
CN: Yeah. What school did you go to?
SK: My father went to Swansea, and I went to Harrington. I guess—dad told me it was interesting—it was an honor to be able to put up the flag. And he did it for the entire school year, when he was in school. So you chose certain people to do that. Now, I went to Harrington Elementary, which is still part of the Swansea district. I went to Harrington from kindergarten through third grade. And then, fourth and fifth grade we went to Mount Calvary Lutheran, which is on York, just a few blocks from where Harrington was.
My fond memories of Harrington—a few things—I remember Field Days were fabulous, and a lot of fun. I remember those seed pods, the trees with seed pods, and breaking those seeds and playing with those things. I also remember, in third grade—a memory that I still have to today. We had a little boy in class, and he was supposed to five 50 cents for milk. He tore his dollar in half and handed it to the teacher. He thought, that’s what milk cost. Well this little boy was from the Hungarian Revolution. He had been brought over, IMMEDIATELY put into our classroom; didn’t know how to speak anything. So the teacher, my teacher, had asked me to take him to the office, to the principal. You know, to this day I don’t believe he ever returned to our classroom.
But I always remember my walking him to the principal’s office and thinking—instead of realizing that this is a child that has come from a tough situation in the Hungarian Revolution, all I was thinking was: What a not-very-smart kid. He has got to be the silliest kid I’ve ever met. I just thought, just like all other kids—when we have bullying today, I sometimes thought: We bullied that kid in our own way, because we didn’t have any idea. We weren’t taught history in such a way, I don’t think, to understand what they were going through when they were brought here. But I was the one that walked that little boy to the principal because he didn’t know what a dollar was and couldn’t speak English in our class.
10:05 Other experiences at Harrington: Harrington was just a good, basic school that I felt. But it got to a point, I wasn’t feeling as safe, sometimes. I had, one little kid said, “I’m gonna get you!” And I was scared to death, sometimes. This boy said, “I’m going to chase you home.” All I can remember is: My aunt’s house wasn’t very far; I hoped that her door was unlocked, and I hoped I could get in when I got there. I remember running as fast as I could to get to her house that day, because I was afraid.
I admit, I also remember one time at Christmas—my father having the Christmas tree lots—mother had hung clothes out on the line, just like we would always do, even in winter. The clothes would freeze on the clothes lines. But we came home one night; and I had some really nice new clothes, even a poodle skirt, and all this stuff—and a pink blouse to go with my poodle skirt. We came home, the clothes were not out on the line, and thought somebody had stolen them. Went to school a couple days later, and I saw the girl that lived across the street, down a couple [?], wearing my clothes. I really wanted to tell her: I know where you got your clothes. And I came home and told my mom, because I was so mad that somebody was wearing my clothes that I knew came off of our clothesline. (Laughs.)
I also remember, in Harrington, my mother was on the school board, and the PTA, which she liked. But, it seemed like this one girl—I was in Brownies; I went to Brownies, had my brown dress, had all that. I still have some of my Brownie stuff. We went to a Brownie meeting, and while my parents were inside doing something, I remember being outside and one of the other girls being really mean to somebody else. And I had to step in and try to—I just was so angry with her, I told mother, “I never want to go to another Brownie meeting again.” (Laughs.) These mean people!
You know, I don’t think—my brother didn’t have Boy Scouts and things. I did the Brownies for just a short time. Mother took me downtown to Florence dance places. You went, sometimes, _____? out of the community. In other words: We didn’t have a grocery store real close. So, if we went for groceries, we went to Dahlia Street—kind of East Denver, Park Hill—to Dahlia Shopping Center for our groceries, King Soopers, and there was a bowling alley there. If we wanted clothes, we typically would go to Chaffee Park, to the west, which was—I’m trying—west, still on 46th, but it would be—oh, I can’t remember—before you get to Lowell and Irving and all that stuff, kind of in that area. Chaffee Park Shopping Center. There was a Joslins store there. Then, if you were going to REALLY buy nicer things, you went downtown to May-D&F or Neusteters and those places.
But you typically didn’t just—like, we think, we have so much variety today. You didn’t turn around and go to a store on a regular—like, we can just now run over to the corner and get whatever. You had a purpose: If you were going to Joslins to buy whatever you needed, kind of thing. And if you were going downtown—it was typically to go to May-D&F—you went at Christmas time. You didn’t go downtown that often; you went Christmas or something more special. Because, the decorations down there were something you went to see. I mean, it was tradition.
We had more tradition—every year with grandpa and the entire family going downtown at the holiday time, was a big deal, where we all walked around. You WALKED around Civic Center, because there was so much to see, that way.
CN: What were the houses like?
SK: Huh! That’s interesting. I remember our little house having two VERY small bedrooms. My brother and I shared the one bedroom. And, in that bedroom we could barely fit two twin beds with one small chest in between it, and a small closet. The funny thing was: I can remember, as a kid, we had single-paned windows, and as the snow and cold would hit the metal around the window, it would freeze and would freeze so thick, at night you’d reach up there and feel the ice on the windows. I can remember peeling the paint off of that metal, which of course is, today, lead-based paint. I didn’t even THINK I would eat the paint; I just loved peeling it off. But that, literally, that ice on those windows would be—around the edges of the window—two, three, four inches around the entire window, in the winter time. It was that cold, from that part.
I remember: We didn’t live very far—right behind us, actually, was a little bit of a dump place. Because of the neighborhood, we got mice—we literally would have little mice running across the living-room floor as we were watching TV. There would be a little mouse, kind of coming out, like he was entertainment with the TV! We also hear mice running across, in the attic of the roof, sometimes. I don’t know why we didn’t have more control on this—but I think they just gave up and thought, having the open field behind us, we couldn’t totally have any control at all with those things.
15:14 It’s funny: Our home, later—our home was 700-and some square foot. We literally, in the kitchen, I don’t know what they called them, but there was a table in the kitchen—it was so small that you had to drop a leaf down. Then you would put—after a meal—you would put the wood back up and screw it back up. It would drop down, lift back up. And then, as you dropped it down, there was a place to set ketchup, salt, and peppers in the wall, is where it fit, inside of a shelfing thing. And the table comes up and down; you couldn’t get around it, you just, a couple of people sit there.
Oh, what’s funny: I remember the patterns on our drapes in the living room. They were patterns of something, like, you’d see in Hawaii. I didn’t know why that was popular at the time. But, they had this black with these great-big—oh, fronds, and things like this. Very colorful prints, in those days, that was very typical ‘40s and ‘50s stuff. (Laughs.) Actually, mother decorated very well. It looked pretty neat; now, when you look back, for retro it was great. (Laughing.)
CN: What about yards? What were—
SK: We had a HUGE backyard, it seemed like. Matter of fact, our yard was so pretty—and it did have [?] alleys, which, now we’re going back sometimes to alleys and some of those things. But, our yard went real deep. We played, snow, we got to ride on our sleds and all, going down this little bit of a hill. I even remembered one time, thinking—when I was about four or something—I was going to ride my trike, and I could ride it so fast. I would go off the steps going off the back—fell and cut my chin wide open, and wound up going over here to a doctor Embro [?], I remember, and _____ stitching up my chin.
But I also remember, we had a black cat that, for some reason, some neighbors were shooting BBs at my cat. You could feel the BBs inside the body of my poor kitty-cat. Then later, I remember there was—we let another black cat in, and a few days later I told my mom—I realized—“Mom, we let the wrong black cat in. We’ve had the wrong one in here for a couple weeks!” And our cat was the one that was actually out on the street. One time we had a bird, it was actually a real parakeet, fly up to the window. We had Chipper the parakeet for MANY years. After he flew up to the dining room window, we had that poor bird for many years. Good old—a parakeet flying up to the window, you don’t get that nowadays.
But, that house really—700-some square feet is what it was. The one bathroom? And four of us, sharing that bathroom to get ready to go to school and all. Our house faced the backyard of, the back of the next neighbors—one time we went out trick-or-treating and I told my brother: “There’s a motel on the corner; let’s go to the motel and see what happens for trick-or-treating.” And, you know, most of those people were surprised, “Oh, we didn’t realize anybody would come here.” Well, we knew they didn’t know they’d come here. So, the next-best thing they do is hand you some change for your trick-or-treats instead of candy! Which was fine with us.
I’ve talked to some other friends that used to live in the neighborhood. We had an A&W Root Beer stand on the corner. The really—like, today we have McDonald’s and Sonics and all this all over. There’s more of those on Colorado Boulevard right now then we had in those days. Those days, you had ONE. One A&W on the corner of 40th and Colorado, and everybody in the neighborhood knew that place. Everybody knew you got a baby root beer for two cents; the next size up was a nickel; and the biggest one was 25 cents. We would go there quite a bit on our way home from work, because of coming from Colorado back to the house. It was just—and those frozen mugs still—there’s A&Ws out there today, but they’re not the same as what that was, what I remembered as a kid. They WERE the best. That was really a fun place to go to.
CN: So, how long did you live in the neighborhood?
SK: We actually didn’t—let me see here. I was born in ’49, we sold our home in 19—we sold in the early ‘60s. The reason was, when they bought our property—what happened is, they built I-70. When I-70 was built, they told us—they told my dad and grandfather for 10 years that they were going to be putting a road through, and they’d be buying the property. So, for 10 full years. During that 10 years, they went ahead and thought: They’re never going to do this. So they went ahead and built on the corner, a little restaurant, a coffee shop, and a liquor store that my uncle ran. So they had this brand-new building, they’d only been there two or three years when they finally did go ahead and buy the property to do I-70.
19:50 When the—my other three uncles, and then this uncle by marriage, ran the liquor store; when they purchased that property—it’s interesting—it was more than just a purchase of the property, because, here’s this family that had started working, was always in business together. At the point the property was sold, it determined that the different families would go different directions. One uncle had decided he was going to go—their family wanted to move to Oregon, which they did. My dad had to decide, what am I now going to do to make a living. That happened in ’59. So dad—my dad was born in 1926. So, in his mid-thirties with his family, he had to decide what line of work am I going to go into. And then the other younger uncle went ahead and worked for the City of Denver, after that, helping with it at that point.
It not only meant that the property sold, it was a total change in the family. My grandfather was somewhat of a manipulative, controlling person, and he loved having them together, and this was a big change for him to accept. You know, had that property not sold and they’d [not] bought all their land, I’ll bet they’d been together until all of them had passed away. It’s interesting.
CN: Talk about the building of I-70, what you remember about that process.
SK: Exactly. I have pictures of the store, our store, because as a kid our store—my dad would actually sleep, and sometimes you’d sleep with him, but not very often. Somebody always had to sleep there to make sure that nobody came to steal stuff from the store. So they would literally have their business, but they’d sleep in a trailer house at night—it’s kind of scary. Every night, somebody had to take that job on. Then later on, when we actually did sell the store, I have pictures of the days when—we’d go up there and take pictures when they started tearing the building down, in order to build I-70.
CN: I’m sorry. Tell me the name of your store, again?
SK: I’m sorry—it was Ornie Knapp’s Country Market. I have some pictures to go with that. But Ornie Knapp’s Country Market, actually, everybody around this neighborhood knew the place. My grandpa bought a lot of his flowers and plants from the different places—in the beginning, their produce came from Denargo Market, down there, and they did that. But then later their flowers and plants came—and carnations decorate—it’s funny, you don’t see carnations a lot now, but every Memorial Day, carnations were a really big deal. Because that was the Colorado State Flower [?], so therefore, that’s what everybody took to the cemeteries. And we have LOTS of carnations on those days, that’s for sure.
Grandpa was funny. He was a character. People would say: He’d have one flower at—he’d have two sets of pansies: one at one end of the lot, for 29 cents; the other pansies at the other end, and they’d be 69, 79, and they’d say, “What’s the difference?” He said, “The price. “ And do you know what? The people would buy the more expensive ones. He honestly would say, “The price.” It was nothing different.
Our whole nursery was done in such a way; I can remember going down to Texas, to get a lot. You didn’t have things shipped from these places, in those days. We’d drive a truck down to Texas to get a lot of the trees and all that we sold at the store.
Then, later on, that’s when it became that we did the wholesaling of Christmas trees—wholesaling and retail of Christmas trees. Then they had—every brother had a different Christmas tree lot, all over Denver, from Federal to south Colorado Boulevard. Then, this was the MAIN office for where they had the tree lots, all the other parts of town.
I can remember Safeway—Safeway warehouse was actually very close behind our building. The kids—we, as kids, would play at the store. We had to water the plants; everybody had jobs. You watered the plants, or repotting of plants. At the same time, there was building of—you dug in the dirt, you built tunnels, you played together, too. I just don’t think—my son, or my nephew, they don’t have that kind of relationship with cousins, in the same regards as what we actually did, by doing that.
Some of the other families in the neighborhood—I think back. It was a real close family thing. You didn’t even think about going out to dinner, like, at night. We would go out sometimes for restaurants on Sundays, maybe, but not until dad had sold the business, really, because he was too busy working on Sundays. That was their main day. But later on, we didn’t go to—I’m sure, before we sold the store, we never went to restaurants. It was only later on, and then very limited. Not even every Sunday. Two things: cost—we tried to be conservative—and then secondly it would have been—there were so many things I buy today that I think, Oh yeah, we never would have bought that. It would have been too expensive in those days. In types of foods, or shrimp—we never bought shrimp, we thought it was very expensive. Things like that.
24:55 The restaurants we did go to—there was a little coffee shop that grandpa would go to once in a while. Before we built the coffee shop, he used to always go to the coffee shop up by our place. And they had the old-fashioned things for the music that you play, in the coffee shop that we built at the store—the jukeboxes, jazz and all that. He always took my brother over there for a hot chocolate. Because, he was real close to my brother, who was two years younger than I am—Gary was his name. It was pretty special.
CN: Well, and then, as you said, I-70—that construction changed everything. So what do you remember about that whole process?
SK: You know, once they started building I-70, you felt like—you had this feeling that, coming across I-70, that it was more of a commercial feeling. It did bring—like dad said, it split—when people say, “Did it split neighborhoods?” Yes, in some ways it did. And it brought more of the commercial feel, because—even from both sides of the stockyards and coliseum, it divided things somewhat here.
I remember some of the construction but actually not quite as much, because we just knew it was going to be—I guess maybe we felt, handled it differently than other people, due to the fact we were told for 10 years, “This is going to happen.”
CN: Did you really think it was going to happen?
SK: We got to a point of thinking, are they really? That’s why we built—two to three years before they built is why built that additional building on the property. So, you got to a point of thinking: These guys are just telling a story; they’re not going to do it. So then, I guess when it actually happened, you just knew it was a done deal. And you didn’t look at it from the “was this good,” “was it bad.” You looked at it: It’s just there, is the way we looked at it.
Oh, and you know: Other memory things. I thought of something else as I was thinking about things. Riverside Cemetery, I found out later, was a special place in the earlier days, because my mother had a brother that had been buried there. And different people would tell me—NOW, I go back to Riverside—I’ve been to Riverside Cemetery for tours, and I thought about how many people that I’ve known in my early days, several were buried at Riverside.
It’s funny, a friend of ours from church—years ago there was a guy named Art Carne, Art and John Carne, and they owned a company called Carne Electric. Carne Electric was very big in Denver, a bigger business around here. And Art Carne used to tell ME about taking dates to Riverside. He would have a date, and he would get his horse and wagon, and take them over to Riverside Cemetery for a picnic. They would sit on the edge of the Platte, because, he said, it was like a park. It must have been such a beautiful—by the way Art told me—it must have been a very beautiful place. And the fact that, later on, to realize what a heritage was there, was very special to me—that even today, that part signifies to me a community that is not just area, but the importance to all of Denver. So I hope that other, you know, other people realize that.
I didn’t even realize—I was looking things up yesterday, and I took a picture once, because it said “First Arapahoe County Sheriff,” was buried one place there. And I took a picture of that and sent it to my friend who’s a sheriff. Said, “Now see this? Look at where this is at!” And I guess the guy that was taking care of Riverside did the same thing. So that people would take care of the place, he’d take a picture of the fire—people that were from the fire department or sheriff’s or whatever. I later learned a lot about the orphan-train children. And he did a special monument to the orphan-train children. This fellow collected the money to put a monument there, in honor of the orphan kids.
The orphan-train children never had names—didn’t even names for their markers, or anything, when they were lost.
CN: Tell me what the orphan train—
SK: Orphan trains were brought from the East Coast to the West. It’s children that—they just put them on trains, to try to get people to take them. Well, when they put them on trains, people would come to the train and say, “I’ll take this child or that one.” And then what they would do is, literally have them work their farm or their businesses, and they’d make them work. Well, then the next year the train would come back again, and they sometimes would have the child they’d gotten the year before and decide that child was too old, or whatever. And they’d sometimes put THAT child back on and take a different child. They never went through full adoption processes or some of the things we did today.
It’s interesting. We just about lost them, but there was just a couple—I’ve heard them speak—there’s just a couple of these kids that used to ride the orphan trains, that were still alive in Denver area today, that spoke at meetings. There was a fellow in Colorado Springs that owned a couple of the Country Buffet restaurants—I found out—that had been an orphan-train child. But if you can imagine, just—and quite often girls rode—the young girls that were on those trains were abused, because nobody had to—there was no Social Services or anything making sure that the children were taken care of, or that it was safe.
30:06 You know, my dad grew up during those days, it’s interesting, during the days of orphan train, and all. I adopted my son 12 years ago—I’m a single person that was able to adopt. And I think that his perspective of things is somewhat still from the days of Depression. His perspective is days of Depression, and you worked. But if you’re an orphan you even worked harder. My perspective of life came during a time when we had it tough, and we worked really hard in the earlier days; but as we worked we paid off, and we got to a point where we were very successful. Actually, more successful than you think. It’s funny, one of the fellows that knew my dad from younger days—I was working for the courts, and when I ran into him, he says: “Your dad—” I know, because of him has turned out to be very successful. And it was true.
I also know, somebody different once would call and say, “I knew, because of your business, that you guys would do well.” Which, it turned out that way later. But our perspectives are totally different, generational. Dad is still, constantly—work was his goal, he did not know how to play. The lifestyle was part of that. And I somewhat know, being a Depression-era kid, why he came from that. Whereas, MY perspective was more: We worked, and we got things, and then we enjoyed it. My younger brother is more like—he is 16 years younger and never got those perspectives. I think because we had the small home and then worked up, I learned to really appreciate where we came from. And that appreciation is somewhat lost in the next generation after this.
So I guess that’s why, when we talked about doing some of this on Globeville and Swansea and Elyria, I looked back and had really kind of fond memories of the fact that we DID grow up without things. But I don’t want to give up what I have today, either! (Big laugh.) Because it’s pretty nice, now.
CN: So what is your relationship with the neighborhood now?
SK: Um, I have just been down to see—I guess I come down to buy products over at the old army arsenal. And boy, is that a cool building; because I’ve bought some fireplaces over there and seen things there. We drive through the neighborhood still. Oh, it was interesting—REALLY interesting, in that: We have a friend that had—Kevin Roy’s dad—worked at Purina Mills. We would have sold my grandfather’s house, 4257 Josephine, would have been sold after grandmother passed away in ’76. So, December of ’76 grandma—so, ’77 is when we would have sold grandpa’s house. I bet it was 20 years—I don’t remember what day—then dad and I, probably 10 years later, were walking around the property. It was vacant. And it was a pretty big, old, Victorian-looking house. I don’t know how they did it; the only bathroom in that house was upstairs. Tiny little stairway to get upstairs. I don’t know how grandma and grandpa did it. I mean, for them to be in their 70s and have one little tiny bathroom and a little tiny stairway going upstairs—I don’t know how they did that part.
But, anyway, it was after we had sold that house—probably 10 or 15 years later—people had been in it, and things. And then it was vacant. And dad and I were walking along—my grandfather was a rock collector. And as we walked around, there were two or three special, special geodes—BIG ones; I’m talking, 10, 12-inch geodes—laying over on the ground, over in the corner. I’m sure who ever lived there just though they were nothing. I looked at dad, and he looked at me. I said, “We know what those are. Those were grandpa’s geodes, because of his rock collection.” I mean, he had a LOT of money into a rock collection, that nobody had any idea. So I picked up the geodes, and I probably still have those today.
I mean, it was kind of special, because it was bringing back a memory when you got to do that. Well then, only a couple years—so AFTER that, it’s funny, I accidentally found out—a friend of ours was driving down—because York was one way headed north, and what’s the next one over—Oh! No, Josephine was one-way headed north, York was headed south. Our friend was leaving work at Purina Mills when he saw a big fire over there. It turns out, he was afraid—he drove over and saw this fire and was worried somebody might be in the house. So he had called the fire department, the whole thing. It turns out this friend of ours is the one that reported the fire in my grandfather’s house, when it literally wound up to be burnt to the ground. He, it turned out later, the cab company wound up buying the property for their use. It’s interesting that you actually got to talk to the person that saw the house when it caught on fire, and when they lost it.
35:03 I remember things like, in grandma’s house going upstairs to my aunt’s bedroom and having that old rose wallpaper that was so popular in those days. The pink and reddish rose wall papers were everywhere. There was a closet—oh my goodness. There was a closet that was angled in the back, and you can’t believe it: My dad had a firecracker stand with a guy that used to have part of the airport, the Vest family. He had these firecracker stands. He told me that, up on Colorado Boulevard one time—it would have been on the Swansea side—they parked an airplane and made it look like it crashed. And everybody would then see this, and stop at the firecracker stand. And they sold firecrackers like CRAZY.
So, if you can believe, that happened. They had that stand—could have been in the ‘40s or early ‘50s, about the time when I was born, late ‘40s, they had this firecracker stand. I’m telling you, when we were cleaning out grandma’s house, in the late ‘70s, dad had stashed a bunch of those firecrackers. Now, we are talking heavy-duty Chinese cherry bombs and really powerful type firecrackers, he had stored in the closet of that house! And only two years ago, he still had those firecrackers in my fire vault. In my garage, I have a file cabinet that is fireproof—supposedly—he put the firecrackers in my fireproof fire vault! Since then, in the last two years, I can guarantee—for safety sake—those firecrackers have disappeared. When you have firecrackers that are 60 years old, it’s time to go! (Laughing.)
CN: Did you ever go to the National Western?
SK: Oh yes, as kids, oh yes. Actually, all the cousins actually went, one time. I can remember walking through, and walking—and I LOVED little lambs and sheep. So, seeing baby lambs over there was the greatest. But the funniest thing is walking through with my cousins, and one of the cousins fell, in “stuff.” In doo-doo stuff. And we were just laughing and teasing each other about this. When you’ve got about 10, 12 cousins walking through this place together, and then teasing the other one who didn’t take it as funny as we took it. Those were really fun times of remembering that, yes. Going to stock show was a very big deal.
CN: What do you know about its development now?
SK: I just know that I have a cousin, that’s on the other side of the family, that’s still VERY active with the stock show. Matter of fact, I was teasing, because he gets grand-champion chicken every year. I mean, it’s so funny. Because I tease him and his daughter about getting number one and two, number two prize. Literally, I think she won $2,000 dollars or so, last year, for her grand-champion chicken. And that helped her go to Hays, Kansas—to go to Kansas, to go to college! So that’s the part I pretty much remember from things there now.
I actually like the venue for going to the Coliseum, still. Because, when we would go to ice-skating shows or some of that, later, you can go, and it’s a smaller venue, and it’s closer to watch everything. And it feels intimate, compared to going to Pepsi Center. And I still—I mean, Pepsi Center may be big and new, but I still like the environment of going to the Coliseum to see things. I liked walking through the barns, like some of the stuff [?] people selling, and all of the little outside places over on the other side of the street. It’s just a local, community feel of going—it’s almost like going to the county fair, feel. Any time you go to the stock show, it’s that kind of feel.
It’s amazing what they have done, actually done for our community, in the long-term growth of things here, and has the feel of past.
CN: So, we can kind of start to work towards the end of our conversation. Tell me what you see for this neighborhood, for the future, and what you would like to see.
SK: I’m impressed with, actually—I’ve learned some things recently, like this little GrowHaus project, and how it’s for the community’s sake.
CN: Say more about that.
SK: I read something about that, and I look forward to—and when I said something to my brother, he said, Oh—he knows all about it. GrowHause is supposed to be a project where there are actually hydroponic growing plants and things. So they have fresh fruits and vegetables, and the education toward the people, for that purpose. And then it’s a recycling, where they’ve got fish. And products from the fish can actually help the plants, too. So, I’m impressed with those kinds of local, community projects, that can still take place.
There’s so much history—like, I find out, dad said when he was at Swansea Elementary School, George McMeen was actually the principal when dad was at Swansea. And later they named McMeen School after the guy that was the principal from when he was there.
40:10 There is a history that’s here that is—like, the Smelter, etc. There’s history that’s here, that sometimes is forgotten when we move on. I think, all of a sudden when you have redevelopment in Highlands or—and some of that—and on the west side. There’s so much that we need to see a community feel. There’s still—you need to have protection, you need to have, for the sake of the people—you can do it in a way to preserve heritage, is what I would like to see happen. I think that can—I think the stock show and some of these things down here, the community can still gather around a lot of this. And I think it’s just great, to have it.
If you lose respect for the area, you don’t take care of it. If you keep that respect, you’ll take care of it. Like I say, to me, Riverside has as much heritage for me as Fairmount Cemetery, because it’s our total, Colorado—it means a LOT to me, actually, because—I took my dad there, he had never really gone. We took mom and dad, and my friend took us on the little tour, on the golf cart, and told us things—history that THEY didn’t even know.
I honestly didn’t even know what the Buffalo Soldiers were, from—was old history. And they had some of the Buffalo—this one presentation, there—he had Buffalo Soldiers there, and told us more history that—if we could teach kids through actually active things, that way, and just maybe bring the kids over to see it, it would sure help.
I hope that we see that heritage is worth saving.
CN: Right. Well, do you want to look back and see if there’s anything—
SK: If I have anything _____ [?]
CN: --anything you wanted to finish with, that I didn’t ask about.
SK: I have a great one. Over by the Coliseum—we talked about the Coliseum? When I was a kid, my very favorite book was called “The Boxcar Children.” I may even still have MY copy of that book, today. Just beyond—there was a field just west of where the Coliseum sat. And literally, there was a—it wasn’t a boxcar, it was like the caboose. There was like a caboose car out there kind of in the middle of a field. And it was always like—I still have a picture of it in my mind today, because it was literally a family living in that caboose. And, because that book was my favorite book, it related to—there was the real family that lived in the Boxcar Children book. And there was a real family that was REALLY living there.
And it was amazing: About a month ago, or so, my nephew—seven years old, little David—comes up, and he’s reading this book. And his book, he’s reading, is the “Boxcar Children.” I had to tell him that was my favorite book as a kid, and I still have my copy of it. I just love that. I mean, if you could see that, in the middle—and the grass fields around it, and THAT typical caboose car sitting out there, and a family coming in and out of there, and living in there. It was real world. Great.
Let me see if I have any other notes of really exciting things. I think that may be (papers shuffling)—Oh! Dad told me about remembering when the circus would come to town, along the railroad tracks. They would always go down, and he says, quite often they unloaded the animals right at the corner of 46th and Josephine and York. Right about that spot is where they’d actually unload the animals to bring over to the Coliseum. And you know it’s—I did not realize—we recently went up to the wildlife sanctuary in Greeley, where they save a lot of the animals. But, we have changed in that, they are not bringing—like, in those days, you literally would have LOTS of tigers, and LOTS of lions and all this, brought to a circus. So it would be car after car of this. Whereas today, we’re not using as many of those animals in the circus.
So, when a circus would come to town for them, and unload a lot of this, it HAD to be a very big deal to walk three blocks and see them unload cars of all this, to go for, over—I don’t think dad actually got to go to the real circus; because I think they really didn’t have the money to go to that place. But it’s interesting, to hear that side of it.
I remember the stories about the smelter, and I don’t remember a whole lot about smell from that. Um—(looking at notes)—just where we shopped, it was pretty interesting. I think we got it. That was good.
CN: Okay. Well, thank you very much for taking time to do this. We really appreciate it.
SK: Oh, thanks a lot, too. It was fun to look back and think back, that’s for sure.
45:04 [End of recording. End of interview.]